


The Silent Stones

by DrakkHammer



Category: Being Human
Genre: Gen, Going Home, No Angst, Prodigal son, Promises, no tears
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-28
Updated: 2015-06-28
Packaged: 2018-04-06 15:05:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,423
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4226421
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DrakkHammer/pseuds/DrakkHammer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's 1964 and it's been a very very long time since John Mitchell has been home.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Silent Stones

 

John Mitchell thumbed a ride, not always easy on lonely country roads in Kilmissan. He hated hitchhiking, people always wanted to talk. The Irish seemed to never shut up. He didn’t give a fuck about their wives, or children, or the shitty job they were working. He didn’t give a fuck about much of anything.

So why was he headed for a place he never wanted to go to?

Swore he wouldn’t go to.

Shit, there it was.

He got out of the car, thanked the driver and watched as he pulled away. Mitchell looked around. Some things never changed. The old cemetery looked like it did the last time he was there, fifty-eight years ago when they buried his nana. Now it was 1964 and here he stood at the entrance to a place that made him feel just as alone and sad as it had when he was thirteen.

He walked down the path, his feet remembering the way. He stopped at the Mitchell part of the cemetery. From the looks of it the Mitchell family had long moved on. No one had visited the graves here in many years. Maintenance here was only lip service, the grass along the rutted path having been cut, but the graves were overgrown and dank with moss.

A rook called out, its raucous cry echoing off the stones. Mitchell shivered and pulled his jacket closer.

He walked into the high grass, the blades still damp from the morning dew. His shoes became moist and his pant legs dappled with wet spots, but he didn’t notice. Heavy brows were pulled down over dark chocolate eyes, shading them to ebony. Along with his short beard, it gave him a sinister look. If he could have seen himself it would have piqued his sense of humor. A vampire stalking around a cemetery should look sinister.

He didn’t feel sinister, though. He felt sadness if he felt anything. He was going through one of his periods of numbness. When the killing got to be too much, he’d learned to switch off his emotions. He could survive then, go another day, another kill, drifting through life, or undeath, as it were, making scarcely a ripple. Some day he would stop making any ripples at all and be one with the stones here, the silent markers of the graves of Mitchell's past; lives that had been lived and lost, children who were born and died. All dust and decay now, if there was even that much left.

He found the stone he sought and ran his hand over it, scraping away enough moss to read it. _Mary Katherine Mitchell born 1871, died 1930_. He touched the date of her death. Fifty-nine was so young. She had been forty-six when he had lost his life to Herrick. She would not have had a body to bury and weep over as she had with his little brother Ruairi. He didn’t understand at the time, but she’d explained that being able to visit his grave was a comfort to her. His fists clenched at the thought that his death had brought her only pain without relief.

Why had he come here?

Mitchell laid his hand on the tombstone, feeling the chill of the stone; it’s roughness, the slickness of the moss that coated it. It felt like time itself – rough and raw and immutable.

“I’m sorry things didn’t turn out like we planned, ma. I’m so very sorry.” He words caught as his throat closed, threatening to choke him. “I tried to be brave and be a good soldier, I really did.”

“I thought I was doin’ the right thing. I wanted to save my men. I didn’t know what I was doin’ and how it would hurt so many others. I didn’t mean to become…a monster.”

He knuckled the tears away, annoyed that he was weeping for himself and his own weakness.

“I’m gonna try to stop and to be the man you thought I was. It’s hard though.”

He bent and rested his head against the stone, letting the roughness of it bite into his forehead.

“I’m lying to myself, aren’t I ma?” His voice was a harsh whisper. “You used to warn me against that. I promise I’ll do my best though. I don’t know how, but I’m gonna stop and try to be the fella you raised.”

Mitchell stood up and heaved a sigh. He felt so lost with no way out. He should have been here resting with his ma and his da and his siblings. He belonged in this place with the mossy stones and overgrown grass. It was peaceful and he had so little peace in his life.

Squatting in front of the stone, he traced the lettering. His thumb dug into the moss that filled in the M in Mary. He scraped it away, following the curve of the letter as he dug the engraving clean. His eyes filled with tears and he looked away.

It was then that he saw it. A stone that should not have existed. It sat next to his mother’s, tilted back as the soil beneath it had sunken inward. Mitchell rose and walked over to it and then knelt to read it.

It was weathered almost past readability, but he could make out the words. _In loving memory of John Pádraig Mitchell beloved son, killed in action June 19, 1917._

He felt a burden lift from his heart. She hadn’t been allowed to mourn a son who died so far away. Someone, probably his da, had made sure that his mum had a place to go to talk with him as she had Ruairi. She would have brought flowers from her little garden and a book that she would read aloud. He could picture her talking to him and to his little brother, bringing them news, not caring if only one stone actually marked a grave. As she had said so many times, the dead live on in your heart. The stone just gives you an anchor to them.

He rose, his features lighter, his eyes a golden brown. He sat cross-legged in front of his mother’s grave and pulled a small book from his pocket. He hadn’t known why he took it with him this morning, but somehow he’d known.

“I remembered that you always loved Yeats, mum. This is my favorite, so I thought I’d share it with you. It’s called, ‘Dream of a Blessed Spirit.’

_All the heavy days are over;_

_Leave the body's coloured pride_

_Underneath the grass and clover,_

_With the feet laid side by side.  
_

_One with her are mirth and duty;_

_Bear the gold-embroidered dress,_

_For she needs not her sad beauty,_

_To the scented oaken press._  


_Hers the kiss of Mother Mary,_

_The long hair is on her face;_

_Still she goes with footsteps wary_

_Full of earth's old timid grace._

_  
_ _With white feet of angels seven_

_Her white feet go glimmering;_

_And above the deep of heaven,_

_Flame on flame, and wing on wing.”_  


He wiped the tears away, took a breath, and started another poem. Unnoticed, the sun chased the shadows across the stones until the light dimmed and the stars rose.

Mitchell could see well enough in the dark and continued to read. Poem after poem poured forth, some read, some repeated from memory. They said all the things that were in his heart. They were his apology for not being able to come back. They were the eulogy for the life he lost and hope for the future.

When he ran out of poems he sang in a sweet soft tenor. The songs of his childhood rolled out, some in English, many in Gaelic. Gradually his voice gave out and he leaned against her stone and slept.

Morning in Kilmissan comes slowly and gently. The sun woke the birds and the birds woke John Mitchell. He rose slowly and stiffly, his clothes damp from the dew. It had been foolish of him to sleep all night on his mother’s grave. Herrick would find it hilarious. But whether humorous, or foolish Mitchell felt hope for the first time in decades. He knew he was weak, but he also knew that he would try. Some day he was going to get back what he lost, he could feel it in his bones.

He set off for the road singing softly to himself, confident that he could turn things around for himself no matter how long it might take.

 

 


End file.
